Whether a study in heritage of Posada or haunting look at modern themes, exhibits explore our neighbor as muse

Updated 8:34 am, Sunday, October 20, 2013

On view in "Messengers of the Posada Influence" at the Museum of Printing History through Feb. 8: "Posada: 100 Years On" by the Amazing Hancock Brothers and Carlos Hernandez.

On view in "Messengers of the Posada Influence" at the Museum of Printing History through Feb. 8: "Posada: 100 Years On" by the Amazing Hancock Brothers and Carlos Hernandez.

Photo: Carlos Hernandez And The Amazing

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Naomi Rincón-Gallardo's "Utopías pirata/Pirate (bootleg) Utopias," a 2012 video, is one of 23 contemporary artists' works represented in "Mexico Inside Out: Themes in Art Since 1990" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth through Jan. 5. less

Naomi Rincón-Gallardo's "Utopías pirata/Pirate (bootleg) Utopias," a 2012 video, is one of 23 contemporary artists' works represented in "Mexico Inside Out: Themes in Art Since 1990" at the Modern Art Museum ... more

Teresa Margolles' "Muro Baleado/Shot Wall (Culiacán)" includes 115 concrete blocks with bullet holes - reflecting a theme those on this side of the border unfortunately are perhaps more familiar with. The piece appears in the "Mexico Inside Out" exhibit. less

Teresa Margolles' "Muro Baleado/Shot Wall (Culiacán)" includes 115 concrete blocks with bullet holes - reflecting a theme those on this side of the border unfortunately are perhaps more familiar with. The ... more

Photo: Nils Klinger, Photographer

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Also in the Modern Art Museum's exhibition is Francis Alÿs' "Rehearsal I" video installation, which injects a bit of charm and humor into the subject matter.

Also in the Modern Art Museum's exhibition is Francis Alÿs' "Rehearsal I" video installation, which injects a bit of charm and humor into the subject matter.

Photo: Courtesy The Artist And MoMA

Baffling, beautiful Mexico - through artists' eyes

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Artists have no problem finding inspiration in Mexico's troubles.

Several museum exhibits this fall suggest the myriad ways they've explored themes of violence, political instability, national identity and social inequality in Mexico for more than a century.

Posada, the father of satirical calaveras cartoons, may have been the first to establish a uniquely Mexican identity in art. His influence is still so pervasive on this side of the border, you might expect to see his shadow in "México Inside Out: Themes in Art Since 1990," a landmark exhibit at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

"México Inside Out" is the first large-scale U.S. exhibit to examine the current scene in more than a decade. Karnes acknowledges in her catalog that she has offered only a barometer of the country's culture.

"Looking at the circumstances of another country from the outside in … is always difficult and fraught with misconceptions - especially in a place like Mexico, with such a long and complex history," she writes.

True, but you have to start somewhere. In Houston, though Latin American art is often in the spotlight, rarely do we see a window this wide open toward our neighbor.

For about 25 years, starting in 1888, Posada illustrated broadsides, theater programs and other printed matter for the leading Mexico City publishing house of Antonio Vanegas Arroyo. He didn't invent the whimsical skeletal figures known as calaveras, but he refined images created by his predecessor, Manuel Alfonso Manilla, into a more potent, poignant form of communication and commentary. He also experimented with technology, adapting then-new methods such as photo-relief etching.

Arroyo's publications were widely distributed, and Posada used the opportunity to help educate Mexico's illiterate masses during the tumultuous years leading to the Mexican Revolution. Posada championed the exploits of Emiliano Zapata, called out corrupt leaders and lampooned high society clinging to European ways.

There's an excellent sense of his revolutionary style in the "Calaveras Mexicanas" exhibit, which also includes fine prints by generations of artists he has influenced.

Curated by Dena Woodall, the exhibit hangs across the long wall of the Law Building's lower level. It needs a better lighted, less-distracting space because there's much to absorb.

Among the classic Posada prints are images so widely reproduced they've entered the realm of pop culture. It's hard to imagine El Día de los Muertos without "Calavera de la Catrina" - that laughing female dandy in a big-brimmed, feathered hat.

One of the most graphically captivating vintage prints, made by an assistant known only as "the master of the worm-eaten skull," is the also-popular "Calavera Huertista," a hairy spider that's a caricature of the villainous Gen. Victoriano Huerta.

Even with its critical tone and exaggerated perspectives, Posada's satire has a warm humanity to it, a sensibility many of the later artists he influenced don't show. Jiménez's large self-portrait, especially, is a chilling, ominous - and magnetic - presence.

Although Posada died poor and unknown, his prints became iconic after they were rediscovered by a Frenchman in the 1920s. Today Posada is a national hero with a dedicated museum in his hometown of Aguascalientes.

They revel in Posada's gritty realism and political-social satire but are also moving the medium forward, employing layers of color in more abstract compositions that reflect 21st-century chaos. The monoprint "Posada: 100 Years On," by the Amazing Hancock Brothers and Hernandez, exemplifies the new style in all its pop-infused glory.

A new series of Posada-inspired prints by Mexican artist Elvira Sarmiento also goes on display at the printing museum Nov. 7.

A worldly avant-garde

Their sense of humor and raw assessment of violence and corruption might be common threads, but the artists represented in the Fort Worth exhibit don't appear to seek inspiration from Posada. They don't offer any dancing skeletons, embracing mortality; they're examining all the complexities of life in a country careening through the dynamic, ever-more-global present.

It's a noisy, chaotic place - quickly made evident by the aural assault from the exhibit's many videos, which play without headphones.

But, surprise: The first galleries don't address drug trafficking or kidnapping, the Mexico we sometimes tend to obsess about on this side of the border. They're about sports.

Visitors are welcome to pick up the paddles and try their hand at Gabriel Orozco's ingenious 1998 "Ping Pond Table," which accommodates up to eight players on an X-shaped surface with a water hazard in the center.

Around a corner, Melanie Smith's "Aztec Stadium. Malleable Deed" is a politically loaded, performance-based video made for the 2011 Venice Biennale. It stars 3,000 public school students whose synchronized placard-flipping in Mexico City's giant stadium looks like a halftime routine. But it doesn't always go smoothly, and the chaos becomes part of a metaphor about government institutions.

More charmingly funny but also suggesting a broken country, Francis Alÿs' "Rehearsal I" video installation stars a red Volkswagen Beetle that can't get up a hill outside Tijuana. Its action is matched by the soundtrack of a jaunty brass band rehearsing. Each time the musicians stumble, the car sputters back down the hill, an absurd and fruitless dance.

The deeper into the exhibit one ventures, the tougher and more haunting the art gets. Artemio's pyramid of dirt taken from the Juarez desert goes all the way to the ceiling in the corner of one gallery, representing the weight of 450 murdered women.